Calmness or Numbness?
There is a difference between finding peace and losing the ability to feel.
6/30/20263 min read
There’s a particular kind of relief that comes when you finally have words for something you’ve been living without language for.
I found mine while scrolling through YouTube one afternoon. A famous actress was talking about depression — what she experienced before she even knew it was depression.
And something inside me went still.
That’s it.
That’s what this is.
Until then, I didn’t know how to explain what I was feeling. I just knew something inside me didn’t feel right. I thought maybe I was too sensitive, too emotional, too weak — maybe even broken.
But suddenly there was a word for it.
Depression.
For the first time, I could explain what I was experiencing with actual words instead of just confusion.
And once I found the word, I began searching for solutions.
I reached out for help. Therapists, doctors, medicines, routines, meditation, self-help content — every possible thing that promised relief or healing.
And after years, something finally shifted.
I arrived at calm.
I was no longer anxious all the time. No longer constantly overwhelmed.
I moved through my days, did what was expected, showed up where I was needed.
By every visible measure, I was better. And honestly, at that point, even neutrality felt like success.
It stayed that way for a while.
But something quietly wasn’t right.
I wasn’t sad anymore. But I wasn’t happy either.
I wasn’t anxious anymore. But I wasn’t excited either.
Good news came and I received it flatly. Difficult things happened and I barely reacted. Even things that should have bothered me — didn’t.
I was functioning normally, but emotionally, something inside me had gone silent.
I stopped cooking.
Stopped dancing.
Stopped singing.
Not intentionally.
I just slowly stopped feeling connected to the parts of me that once felt natural.
And quietly, that started bothering me too.
The saddest part was that no one around me noticed this change.
In fact, everything around me looked smoother than before.
No breakdowns.
No visible struggle.
No emotional reactions.
Everything was finally “normal.”
And when everything appears normal, no one questions it. Eventually, even you stop questioning it. Because fine asks nothing of you. So you begin asking nothing from yourself either.
It was only later — through meditation, and then coaching — that I understood what I had been calling calmness.
It was numbness.
Emotional numbness.
Just like the body has fight-or-flight, the mind has its own version of retreat. It disconnects.
From pain.
From pressure.
From disappointment.
But eventually, also from joy.
Excitement.
Curiosity.
Passion.
Even from yourself.
And the fact that no one around me noticed was proof of how functional numbness can look.
You still perform.
You still show up.
You still keep life running.
But internally, you quietly stop participating emotionally in your own life.
And yes, it can feel peaceful. But I had to ask myself an honest question:
Was this peace worth it?
Because the cost of this particular calm was high.
The cost of never disappointing anyone became never fully expressing myself either.
The cost of avoiding failure became avoiding trying new things at all.
The cost of emotional safety became emotional absence.
And the cost of keeping everything smooth was quietly disappearing from my own life.
That kind of life isn’t necessarily wrong.
It is functional.
It is manageable.
It is often what works best for everyone around you.
But can it truly be sustained — especially when it stops working for you?
Because there is a difference between stillness and absence.
One is something you arrive at.
The other is something that slowly happens to you while you’re busy surviving, coping, and keeping everything together.
Not breaking down is not the same as being fully alive.
Real peace is not the absence of emotions.
Real peace is being able to feel deeply — without needing to disconnect from yourself to survive it.